Seiji Ogawa, Special Advisor to CiNet and NICT Invited Advisor, has received the 2017 Keio Medical Science Prize Laureate. (Sept. 11, 2017)
Research Theme: Development of functional MRI
It has been officially announced that Seiji Ogawa has been awarded the 2017 Keio Medical Science Prize for his work on the development of a technique for detecting Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) signals in the brain. His technique depends on blood oxygenation levels, which he named BOLD (for Blood Oxygen Level Dependent), and he showed that BOLD signals can be used for functional mapping of the human brain following sensory stimulation. This work established the basic principles underlying functional MRI.
Seiji Ogawa has been Special Advisor to CiNet since it was founded, making great contributions to our research to develop brain imaging methods and functional analysis using MRI. When BOLD was first developed 20 years ago, it was often used for functional mapping, but in the recent years, together with advanced machine learning and computer technologies, the application has been extended to decoding of brain activity and diagnostic analysis of neuropsychiatric disease by network analysis.
The outcomes of many CiNet researchers have benefitted from BOLD: Shinji Nishimoto working on decoding of perceptual contents, Ben Seymour discovering pain networks, Tetsuya Shimokawa analyzing neural networks of schizophrenic patient, and Masahiko Haruno identifying the relationship between activity patterns in the amygdala and depression tendency. Seiji Ogawa’s great contribution to brain functional imaging and analysis is highly appreciated.
Official web of the Prize:
http://www.ms-fund.keio.ac.jp/prize/index.html